WoW – More fun together!

Switching Gears

I’m not talking about major switches in your gaming, not the “now my main is a hunter” or “I just moved servers” thing. No, just the evenings where you look at the loading screen and say “I want to play this guy”. I know there’s some folks who only have a couple characters, or even a single main, but I’ve got 8 characters on Winterhoof. One bank alt, she doesn’t count. One main. One actively being levelled lowbie shaman, one “I logged into her a few weeks back” lowbie hunter. A paladin at 84 and two not-my-main 85s, my mage and my priest. Oh, and a worgen that hasn’t left the starting area.

In the last two weeks, I’ve spent several hours on my paladin, my shaman, my priest, and my mage. Invariant, the mage, had been getting plenty of fresh air anyway since she is my archeologist and I’m still looking for that flaming doll. The others, not so much. Every time I log in I have to reacquaint myself with the way each operates.

One thing that helps is keep my UI fairly standard across characters. The action bars in the same places, Recount and Omen in one corner, Vuhdo frames in their proper spot, even on my non healer characters – Invariant has Remove Curse mapped in Vuhdo, no need for Decursive. For my healer characters, I assign similar spells to the same mouse click combos – right mouse click for a good HOT, shield, or fast cast, other combos for longer cast spells. That way I can let the muscle memory work for me.

Same with my action bars; I try to keep spells that do similar things in the same place across characters. Of course, this is subjective. Frost Nova and Disengage do not do the same thing, at all, but they have the same spot on my action bars for their respective characters. I tend to keep opener moves on 1 and 2, aoes toward 6 and 7, and emergency spells at the end.

ArcInventory is my bag addon of choice. I have it set up to use the “Rules” to sort things for me. So what I get when I hit my B key is a giant bag with everything I own, but visually seperated into containers by the rules I set. I can have all my crafting mats assigned to the two left hand columns, my spare armor set in the bottom right, and junk items at the very top, all by themselves. If I keep it the same across characters, any time I open my bags I know where things will be.

I have a quick routine when I get onto a character that I’ve been resting up. Check my bags and gear to see if I need to sell and repair. Check my map and quest log, to see where I need to go. Check over my abilities and remind myself just what this character actually does. Takes about three minutes and then I’m ready to go. The first few pulls are uncomfortable as I search for the right abilities, remember critical things (“Oh, right, pet.” “Oh, right, totems”. “Oh, right, mage armor”). After that I settle in.

That said right now my paladin is the hardest to get into. I’m leveling in ret by questing. I just am not comfortable with the spec at all. It doesn’t feel like me. I’m not really a melee player; I like standing at range and killing stuff. And things are always lighting up and I don’t know what to push. This goldenish swirly icon? That goldenish swirly icon? The one that looks like a shiny hand? Ack! I may just wait til she gets a whole level of rested and then heal dungeons the last bit of the way; I’m much better at that.

But I do think there’s value in switching characters. I’ve been working hard on learning all the raid fights as heals; when I switched and did a few fights on my mage, I was amazed at how much easier it was to pay attention to stuff on the ground I needed to move out of, target switching time, etc. Of course, I was focused on that somewhat at the expense of my dps but…. that wasn’t too shabby either.

I also find that switching around and not spending lots of time on any alt favors “simple” specs and rotation. Switching to Invariant and going arcane is easy. The fights where I’ve gone fire? Let’s not talk about that… fire is much much more complicated and while fun, would take time to master that I’m not spending.

Remember, the most important thing to do when you’re switching characters is always put your toys away – mom’s advice growing up works well now too. Even if you think you’re only logging into your main for a few minutes, stick your leveling alt in an inn, sell her junk, mail things you want to auction to your bank alt. There are far too many times I’ve gotten on a main to send something to an alt and found myself three hours later in a Stonecore run that just won’t die. Save yourself the headache and always leave in a way that makes it easy to come back.

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11 Responses

Hey,
I do what you do – for example my priest has renew bound to where Elsen has rejuv bound.
I also keybound levitate and took it off my bars and started jumping off things. Only took 4 or 5 deaths to work out where it was in my keybindings.
It also takes me a few minutes to register what character on – I’ve got 5 level 85s now (4 of which are healers, and 1 hunter) and it can take me a few minutes to adjust. I’m really looking forward to finding the time to start heroicing on them in order to really LEARN how they work in comparison to my druid.
Practice makes perfect!

Exactly! For PVE, nothing beats instance-running for making you remember how to play a character, it’s like jumping into the deep end of a pool. But nothing feels as good as going back to the main… “Ah, flight form keybind, how I’ve missed you”.

I do it the same way as well. Every tanking character has Taunt bound to the same key for example. It’s just a lot easier that way.

But then of course you switch from tank to healer or healer to dps and you end up with a few more changes. But for the most part it works out.

Then, you have the really silly keybinds that have a random thing depending on your class, and you’re too used to hitting it at what may be opportune moments..

Like having Life Tap and Blink on the same key. I can’t begin to count how many times I had to Blink into a trash pack before I got used to the fact that my Mage did NOT need to automatically hit that key when she was low on mana…

Yup, having those ‘must hit fast’ things in the right place is so key. Taunt is always the same on my tanks. And I had to move it out of the way from where it was on non tanks so my muscle memory still worked. I finally figured out that putting my ‘pet attack’ macro on my hunter in the same place as taunt worked well for retaining that. When my brain says “ah! I must get that target off of something it should not be on!” then I hit that key. On a hunter it gets stuff off me and on a tank it gets stuff on me but it is still the same reflex. Also on all my tanks I have my cooldowns in the same ‘patch’ of key binds. So in a pinch hammering a few keys in that area will make something good happen.

Binding similar things is very helpful. For instance, every single toon has their interrupt on the same key. Not all of them are as useful as others, like the once per minute silence of the spriest, but still .. that’s where it goes. Even Kerick has his Rebuke in the same spot .. you never know when you might need to get in a clutch interrupt while healing. ;)

The two DKs have all of their keybinds identical.

I … am ok with ret, but don’t find it all that much fun. So I dropped it in favour of another holy spec with Denounce and the other talents that buff the damage of Holy Shock and Exorcism. You might try it, it works alright for questing. Not having to drag around extra gear is nice, too.

I’m not sure what it is with arcane, but it just failed to hold my interest this expansion. Fire … has taken time to get used to, and I’m not entirely sure I’m good at it yet. It does take a lot of practice.

I started doing the ‘make my binds the same’ ages and ages ago playing Real Time Strategy games. It really helped to always have 1 but light fast scout type force and 4 always be some heavy ‘punch’ like a squad of tanks. That way I spent a lot less time trying to remember stuff. On every character 5 is always an AOE move. 1-4 are always core moves in the rotation. 8 is almost always a rapid movement button, like disengage or charge. Interrupts are usually 9 and often are a mouse button bind too.

I’m an altoholic, too. I have about 15 toons on 3 realms in both factions. I rarely play some of them (particularly from my first realm), but I still log on and mess around here and there on my old “mains.”

I do exactly what you do with the keybindings being associated with certain abilities, so my defensive cds are all on “T” or … well nothing’s more boring than listing keybindings, but you get the point.

Additionally, I agree with the idea of alts working best with simple rotations. I haven’t played my max-level druid in a while, but I fear getting back into the feral rotation will be a pain in the butt.

Like everyone else here, i try to keep everything as close to the same for each toon. And i too, go with simpler rotations on alts. The only issue there is when you’re in a group and suddenly expected to do something you never do on your own.
The clcret addon really help with the ret pally rotation… Give it a try.
Healers- how do you have vuhdo set up on your screen… I’m just curious. Ana, can we have a screen shot?

I keep mine closer to the center of the screen, just inside my party frames. Analogue, ask that shot shows, keeps her part frames off a lot fo the time.
Sometimes I have my vuhdo on the right side too. Usually on the left though. I also like to blow mine up nice and big so the hot icons don’t block much. And more side then tall. The wider they are the easier it is to get a sense of just how full the health is. Small squares, used by those who prefer the healbot look, don’t give as much awareness of the relative levels. A nice long bar lets you more easily see the difference between 15% and 20% (for example).